Philip Ball on How Scientists Stopped Being Curious

We started watching an interesting youtube video by Philip Ball on history of
science, where he showed the trend in use of the word ‘curiosity’ to discuss
how the scientific culture of Anglo-Saxon countries began in the mid-16th
century.

That got us curious about what happened since then, and the results are quite
astounding. In the following charts, we present google ngrams trends for the
words ‘curious’ and ‘curiosity’ since 16th century.

In April 1583, Bruno went to England with letters of recommendation from Henry
III as a guest of the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. There he became
acquainted with the poet Philip Sidney (to whom he dedicated two books) and
other members of the Hermetic circle around John Dee, though there is no
evidence that Bruno ever met Dee himself. He also lectured at Oxford, and
unsuccessfully sought a teaching position there. His views spurred
controversy, notably with John Underhill, Rector of Lincoln College and from
1589 bishop of Oxford, and George Abbot, who later became Archbishop of
Canterbury. Abbot poked fun at Bruno for supporting the opinion of Copernicus
that the earth did go round, and the heavens did stand still; whereas in truth
it was his own head which rather did run round, and his brains did not stand
still, and reports accusations that Bruno plagiarized Ficino’s work.